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Bad latch at 6 months

Please help! My baby is 6 months. I thought I was a confident bf for the first 3 months until my baby's had slow weight gain (3 ozs a week) from a period of 6 weeks. It totally knocked my confidence!
For the last 6 weeks she has been gaining 6 ozs a week, however, I still don't feel confident. I've noticed her chin never touches the breast whilst feeding. Should this still be happening as baby gets older? I keep trying to get her to open her mouth really wide but she slips off after a few seconds. She only nurses for about 3-5 mins at a time -on each breast. Is this long enough?
Does a latch change as baby gets older? Can anyone recommend a good feeding position for the 'older' baby?
Thank you so much. Sometimes I think I'm going crazy!

Re: Bad latch at 6 months

In general, a latch that feels good is good, even if it looks odd. As long as mom isn't in pain and the baby is gaining weight at a normal rate, there's nothing to worry about!

Fast feedings are also normal with older babies, who learn to get their nutritional needs met very quickly so that they can get back to exploring the interesting world around them.

It's normal for a baby's rate of weight gain to vary. Sometimes a baby will shoot up in height while pausing in weight, or pause in height and put more calories into fat. And around the 4-6 month mark, many babies start to drop weight-for-age percentiles as they devote increasing amounts of calories to motion. All the reaching/rolling/squirming/crawling/etc. that babies do consumes a lot of calories.

Re: Bad latch at 6 months

My baby has definitely gotten faster at feedings as she's gotten older (she's almost 8 months now), and I find that we seem to do a lot more frequent, shorter feedings as she's busy playing and exploring. Once she was able to sit up a little better (which I assume your LO is, if you're considering starting solids), a different position we used was basically her straddling my lap and nursing sitting up. I usually hold my breast in my hand to get it at the right spot for her. This works especially well if she's wide awake and not nursing down to sleep, and just needs a quick drink!

Re: Bad latch at 6 months

Something else that might be affecting the latch is teething. Any signs of teething? (excessive drooling, general fussiness, putting everything into the mouth, chewing everything, clamping down harder on the breast, or fussing at the breast like she's in pain, pulling off breast as if she's distracted, sleeping worse/waking more, in some cases a fever) I know my LO had a worse latch a few weeks around getting his first tooth, then again when the next set came in. I found that when teething causes a bad latch, it usually corrects itself as the teeth come in and baby gets used to the new chompers.